Sony Music Cuts Off Third Party Licensing (?!?)

[Lush Life]

There are discussions taking place at the Steve Hoffman forum and at Film Score Monthly forum (and perhaps others) that indicate Sony Music has made a decision to terminate third party licensing for reissues, presumably as a way to maximize the value of their future digital business.

I can't find a specific press release/announcement from Sony Music itself, but at minimum there's a lot of smoke around this issue. If there is "fire", there are a lot of reissue labels who suddenly have no access to old recordings for modern release.

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/sony-music-cuts-off-third-party-licensing.813214/

Also being discussed in this thread:
https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/current-sony-remaster-campaign-digital-only-releases.776635/
 

My apology if this is already being discussed somewhere here within organissimo.org, I looked but didn't see any threads that jumped out at me.

[ghost of miles]

Heard from a reliable source several weeks ago that this is indeed the case.  

[Brad]

I’m listening to the Mosaic Basie and Lester Young Studio sessions. I suppose that means going forward we won’t see Sony license any sets like that?

[Shrdlu]

It is disgusting that our wonderful music is now controlled by these enormous, soulless empires, that know nothing about music.

A read of Arthur Taylor's "Notes And Tones" is very pertinent here. Many famous players have something to say about who controls the music business.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

I guess those Miles Davis reissues from MoFi will now be worth a lot more since they may represent the last "audiophile release" they will get?

[ghost of miles]

53 minutes ago, Brad said:

I’m listening to the Mosaic Basie and Lester Young Studio sessions. I suppose that means going forward we won’t see Sony license any sets like that?

Yep.

[HutchFan]

Oh man. I'm bummed out to hear this. 

[miles65]

It wouln't be bad if Sony did anything with its archives. But it probably means that most of the Okeh, Columbia and Victor etc. won't be available again. Makes you wonder about the upcomming Louids Armstrong Mosaic set with Sony material.

[felser]

Well, I'm glad this is happening now, and not 25 years ago.  But still bummed.  And at least in my case, they are shooting themselves in the foot.  My total lifetime expenditure on digital music has been $11.98 ($4.99 for the Hannibal Marvin Peterson MPS album, and $6.99 for Elvin Jones at Town Hall), where I own many hundreds of discs created by companies who licensed the material from Sony.  

[paul secor]

Looks like this will put a real hurt on Sundazed which has done many LP reissues of Columbia/Sony material.

[HutchFan]

12 minutes ago, paul secor said:

Looks like this will put a real hurt on Sundazed which has done many LP reissues of Columbia/Sony material.

Yep. I also immediately thought of Wounded Bird.

 

 

18 minutes ago, felser said:

Well, I'm glad this is happening now, and not 25 years ago.  But still bummed.  And at least in my case, they are shooting themselves in the foot.  My total lifetime expenditure on digital music has been $11.98 ($4.99 for the Hannibal Marvin Peterson MPS album, and $6.99 for Elvin Jones at Town Hall), where I own many hundreds of discs created by companies who licensed the material from Sony.  

I agree, felser. I have quite a few downloads, but physical media is always preferable to me.

I guess there aren't enough old-school, "I-want-the-object" people like us make a viable business case for licensing -- at least for a mega-corporation like Sony.

Argh.

[Brad]

1 hour ago, ghost of miles said:

Yep.

Jesus. Does that mean Sony will do these on their own, or not at all?

[crisp]

If Sony plans to make its entire archive available for streaming, then some good may come of this. We could access far more vintage jazz etc than Mosaic and others could ever have been capable of offering. The technology offers this opportunity.

My fear is that as usual with big record companies Sony will act as gatekeeper, streaming the material they think we should hear and hoarding the rest.

[Stonewall15]

Maybe because of this Sony will release CDs of Dave Brubeck "The Last Time We Saw Paris" (CL2852/CS9672) and "Compadres".(CS9704).

[crisp]

More likely Kind of Blue the 6-disc ultimateessentialsuperdeluxe edition in mono, stereo Blu-ray and played backwards.

[JSngry]

People - you need to be your own library, your own archive. Now more than ever, and it may well get worse.

[felser]

20 minutes ago, JSngry said:

People - you need to be your own library, your own archive. Now more than ever, and it may well get worse.

Indeed, I'm sort of "finishing off" my collection right now, and my jazz has largely been done for a couple of years.  Seems like the Japanese (and the Andorrans) are the only ones who are ever going to put out any jazz CD's I want going forward.  And even the Andorrans seem to be slowing down or repeating themselves.

[JSngry]

And don't trust the cloud, or more to the point, don't trust it like it's going to be there forever. Maybe yes, maybe no. Is the cloud yours?

When it comes to being able to access your media on your terms, self-reliance is the long-term way to go. Of course, when there's no more electricity as we now know it, that'll be another thing. But hopefully nobody here lives to see that.

[Rooster_Ties]

I'm totally with you, Jim.  Anything (or rather, any particular thing) you have on the Cloud, might well disappear 10-15 years from now (or next year, you never know).  I do not trust anything other than media or data that I control myself -- at least in terms of long-term access.

Yeah, a fire could come a destroy it all.  But other than that, I think my little (physical) collection of ~3,000+ CD's (and a few hundred LP's) stands a MUCH better chance of being able to be listened to 20 years from now, than anything (or rather, any particular thing), going forward.

Yeah, I spent way too god damn much on all those Terumasa Hino CD reissues recently -- but you can't even access ANY of that stuff on-line (other than random YouTube uploads, which come and go).  I suspect half my music collection is like that -- some of it not terribly hard to access one way or another NOW -- but in the 2030's?? -- who the hell knows.

 

[JSngry]

Cloud storage is a great backup. But Plan B is by definition not Plan A.

[Scott Dolan]

The cloud ain’t going nowhere, folks. 

[Rooster_Ties]

1 minute ago, Scott Dolan said:

The cloud ain’t going nowhere, folks. 

The Cloud ain't going nowhere (in general), but anything I bought from somebody that they put up on the cloud for me (and my access is controlled through them), sure as hell might go somewhere.

[Brad]

I prefer hard media and will enjoy what I have. 

[Big Beat Steve]

Too bad for post-1962 music but this sounds like European P.D. labels suddenly wil become of yet more interest, if only as a a stopgap measure and act of self-defense. 

[JSngry]

5 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Too bad for post-1962 music but this sounds like European P.D. labels suddenly wil become of yet more interest, if only as a a stopgap measure and act of self-defense. 

If I want to, I can probably get it from the same places they do. So perhaps they now become of less interest since their well is drying up.

16 minutes ago, Rooster_Ties said:

The Cloud ain't going nowhere (in general), but anything I bought from somebody that they put up on the cloud for me (and my access is controlled through them), sure as hell might go somewhere.

Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream.

Merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.

or

One of these days (and it won't be long)

You're gonna look for Valdo and he'll be gone.